Name: Baytown’s Robert E. Lee High School will keep its name, for now
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Baytown’s Robert E. Lee High School will keep its name, for now

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Trustees at Goose Creek CISD voted 4-3 against changing the name of Baytown’s Robert E. Lee High School early Thursday, capping off a contentious board meeting that lasted more than eight and a half hours.However, the board did approve the creation of a committee to study changing the name of the school and potentially others, and trustees could revisit the issue once the committee has finished its work.The debate over changing the name of one of Texas’ last remaining schools to bear Robert E. Lee’s name comes amid national calls to remove monuments commemorating and rename schools honoring Confederate figures.More Education NewsThe conversation in Baytown has grown especially contentious in recent weeks. Proponents of keeping the name against two trustees in favor of changing it. Trustee Agustin Loredo III alleged those seeking to keep the name have called the school where he works and the Texas Education Agency to try to get him sanctioned, although neither effort succeeded. Trustee Richard Clem said he has gotten emails from people, including an alderman in Chicago, telling him that his vote as a white man did not matter and that he was racist.The divide was evident among the 60 or so people who spoke during public comments Wednesday.Those who spoke in favor of keeping the name said removing it would show the district had caved to outside influences and “cancel culture.” They said removing Lee’s name would not make the history of the Confederacy go away but would tarnish the memories of the generations of people who attended the 92-year-old school. Others said spending as much as $400,000 to change the name throughout the school and on uniforms would be imprudent while the COVID-19 pandemic could cause budget shortfalls in the district.Among those who sought a name change were Black alumni and current students who said walking through the halls of a school dedicated in memory of a man who fought to keep their ancestors enslaved made them feel unwelcome. Changing the name, they said, would not change the memories of those who attended but instead would show the school’s diverse student body that the district cares about their well-being. Last school year, about 71 percent of the students were Hispanic, slightly more than 14 percent were Black and about 12 percent were white.Trustees voted to form a committee to investigate name changes first, although Trustee Shae Cottar and two other trustees supported a motion to vote on whether to change Lee High’s name first.Clem pointed out that other district schools were named after people who owned slaves or who held racist views. Stephen F. Austin, he noted, owned slaves at one time, and Mirabeau B. Lamar sent troops to forcibly remove Native Americans from Texas so white settlers could take their lands. Trustee Loredo said Clem’s comments show the district needs to be more thoughtful with who they honor with campus names.Trustee Howard Sampson, the sole Black member of the board, noted that the idea to create the committee only came about after there were recent and more vocal calls to rename Lee High School. He and Board President Jessica Woods spoke over each other as they discussed how the name-change debate has played out.“It’s going to be railroaded, I can already see it,” Sampson said. “If you have five on one side five on the other side, how are you going to break the tie?”Woods said the committee would be created in the style that other committees were to discuss issues such as zoning and bond elections, with roughly 30 people involved, including spokespeople for both sides of the issue or a third-party mediator. Ultimately, five trustees voted in favor of creating the committee, while two abstained.Woods then moved to table the vote on changing the name of Robert E. Lee High School, but her motion failed. She called it a “moot point” because the board already had voted to form a committee to study the matter. Woods, Clem and Trustees Tiffany Guy and Ben Pape voted against changing the name; while Sampson, Cottar and Loredo voted in favor.The votes occurred as cities and municipalities across the country are wrestling with what to do with public symbols of the Confederacy, the vast majority of which were built decades after the Civil War ended. The American Historical Association has said their creation “was part and parcel of the initiation of legally mandated segregation and widespread disenfranchisement across the South,” and the wave of monuments dovetailed with the Jim Crow era.The Mississippi Legislature approved a new flag earlier this month to replace one that included a Confederate battle flag, and the two remaining Confederate statues in Houston were removed this summer after racial justice protests swept across the nation. However, the Confederate Soldiers Monument still stands on the grounds of the Texas Capitol.Houston ISD spent $1.2 million in 2016 to rename seven schools that previously bore the names of Confederate figures. The money was used to replace signs and athletic and band uniforms. And earlier this summer, Midland and Tyler ISDs of their high schools that bore Lee’s name, making Baytown’s Robert E Lee High School among the last in the state.shelby.webb@chron.com

Trustees at Goose Creek CISD voted 4-3 against changing the name of Baytown’s Robert E. Lee High School early Thursday, capping off a contentious board meeting that lasted more than eight and a half hours.However, the board did approve the creation of a committee to study changing the name of the school and potentially others, and trustees could revisit the issue once the committee has finished its work.The debate over changing the name of one of Texas’ last remaining schools to bear Robert E. Lee’s name comes amid national calls to remove monuments commemorating and rename schools honoring...

Baytown’s Robert E. Lee High School will keep its name, for now

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